An email to the address your student provided should be sufficient. If that address was not correct, your student should update it, but it is reasonable for the school to notify her using the email address she provided. Certainly that would be legally sufficient. I’m still puzzling how anyone could think taking only 2 classes would not have big FA implications and get something in writing from the registrar prior to the semester.
@roycroftmom The number of courses was not a problem. Not at all. You did not state your extensive experience with financial aid that would help me to understand your certainty. Regardless, it is still incorrect. The problem was the repeat course coupled with the misleading documentation that implied that transfer credits counted in the calculation of percentage of attempted credits that were completed. THAT was the problem.
On a related point - students are not given access to the real registrar. Wrong information is communicated regularly from the “front lines” person at the registrar’s office too, with great cost to the students. Remember my previous post that the front lines folks who were trying to explain the new bill, that those folks could not explain it and could not explain the misleading information in the financial aid document??? Well, the same problem exists with the registrar. This problem is not unique to this university, sadly. Long term trends in reduced state aid, budget cuts on top of budget cuts, have led to chaos.
You are indeed correct that one email sent to the correct email address under perfect circumstances ought to be enough. But email systems are not perfect. They serve as good documentation of 'sent email" but sent email is not always received. I went through a period of time when a colleague of mine at a different university just stopped receiving my emails. Then just as suddenly, the problem resolved. No explanation.
If one single email were a sufficient means of communication, then individuals could receive legal subpoenas via email. House foreclosure notifications could be sent via email.
Email is GREAT. Truly. I use it a lot. But it is imperfect. And again, to state for perhaps the 10th time, regardless of how the university chooses to communicate the change in financial aid status to the student, the information ought to appear, AT A MINIMUM, as a warning at the “home” page of the student’s financial aid portal. There is still no visible evidence of the current status.
@twoinanddone I posted earlier today - I now have learned that the advisors CAN access the financial aid information if they want. It requires a different log in to a different online system.
I suggest you go back to your two “contacts” and ask them this question - for a student on Warning status for financial aid, AFTER the initial notification of the “achievement” of that status - is the information posted anywhere on the student’s online portal? Anywhere at all? At the financial aid portion of the portal?
And then ask, if the student then transitions to being fully ineligible for financial aid - is THAT information posted anywhere on the student’s account? anywhere? Maybe perhaps on the private financial aid portal?
These are little things. Sure, many don’t care. Tough luck to the student who messes up. Bye bye. But universities should care and they often say they care. Little changes could help a lot.
AndI am not blaming the advisors. I am just saying that they did not know either.
Information is power and facilitates personal responsibility.
To answer your question, there are no federal regulations dictating how or how many times students must be contacted regarding SAP issues.
Please remember, you’re speaking of your college and other posters are speaking of their experiences, likely at different colleges.
I don’t think this thread will give you perfect and complete agreement about policies at your kiddo’s college.
You said this has been “has been addressed and the mistake will not occur again.” Some here don’t agree there should be more responisbility on the college’s shloulders.
The instant my kids said they wanted to drop from the usual full courseload, a flag went up in my mind and we discussed being certain this was allowed, from several perspectives. That included FA, credit toward the number of courses required for the major, and time enough to make up for being short one semester (or more.) Not relying on the advisor, who may not know other depts or FA specifics.
Sorry you went through this, hope it’s a sort of life lesson for your child. CC is full of tales of kids who missed something- a deadline, a requirement, SAP minimums and more. Kids who didn’t check email or spam, didn’t think x applied to them, etc. That’s risky.
@lookingforward At the risk of belaboring the point - you say that a flag went up in your mind whenever one of your kids wanted to drop from the usual course load.
When my kid transferred, we did not wait for that flag to go up. Instead, we read, in advance, the entire two-page document produced by the university that explains its criteria for maintaining satisfactory academic progress. The document was misleading at best. (And, as I have also said previously - the front lines financial aid folks also were unable to explain the discrepancy in the document.)
But, no worries whatsoever – I am not seeking approval or agreement! Good thing, huh?!! I DID start the thread with a specific question and I think two posters addressed it. I kinda guessed that there were no guidelines but I figured I would run it by this incredibly informed, supportive CC community.
Importantly, it does not matter if any other poster agrees on the issue of whether universities should take more responsibility to convey information about financial aid. Why? Because the universities themselves DO care. They SAY they care. They HAVE to care because it affects their graduation rates, it affects the percentage of former students who re-pay federal loans, it even affects their own operating costs. My point is that they care greatly, in the abstract, but often seem incapable of fixing the roadblocks, even the small ones, that are not great for students for sure, but are bad outcomes for the universities as well. They have meetings about it, convene conferences, hire more administrators, take a zillion actions to improve student retention and graduation rates - yet they remain disconnected from the daily experiences of their own actual students.
I am speaking not just about this one experience at one university with my very own “kiddo.” I am making the connection between weak effort at communication that I have observed personally, which includes the single email notification, no information at the student’s online portal, and the misleading documentation, a trifecta of sorts–relating it to what we know about effective communication from other areas of life, and explaining why it matters for students and the universities. It is costing all of us more money and hurting the reputation of the university that each one of our kids attend, when the university does not make more than the absolute minimal effort to communicate fundamental facts.
Finally, please don’t worry about my kid or me. We are fine. Moving forward, more than one lesson learned and more than one habit revised… In fact, I am a better teacher/mentor to my students given that I now can relate in a personal way to many of their day to day experiences.
Profdad,I don’t have any experience at all with financial aid, but I do know enough to get approval in writing if deviating from the normal route, whether that is a course substitution or prerequisite being waived or financial aid or anything else. I bet all of us have kids who have learned this the hard way, and who also learned that they need to pursue things beyond the front lines of college admins sometime. What your student was doing was unusual and probably should have been highlighted and discussed in writing. If she prefers getting notices via US mail rather than email, maybe she can ask her college to accommodate that request too. While you may have found the college’s written info confusing, it is unlikely that it was legally misleading. The college lawyers generally make sure of that.
Just saying: at most colleges, two courses would be part-time and there are usually policies re: that and/or repeating a course already taken. At many colleges, re-taking a class requires some approval, if one wants credit for the repeat.
My kids didn’t drop classes. They planned to register for fewer than full time. That’s when the flag went up. That’s when we clarified, via a number of resources. Perhaps you feel you did.
But since our (parents) time in college, the move has been away from the schools serving in loco parentis. It does mean more responsibility on the students.
Maybe at your colleges the advisers have access to FA rules and are willing to figure it out for every student, but I’m glad they do not have access at my daughters’ schools and I don’t want them advising my kids that it’s okay to drop and there will be no FA issues. If those advisers are wrong, I’d be the one paying for the lost aid. I was a pretty involved parent on anything that would cost me money and my kids knew that.
My professor/adviser friend said she doesn’t have access to her students’ FA records. I asked her, and I said that in post #19. She deals with the academic choices and refers them to FA office for other issues. If there was a warning on the FA portal, she doesn’t have access. She wouldn’t look up health information or whether the student was late on paying a bill either. That is personal information on the student’s portal.
I get it. You are mad that you didn’t get a warning. I think there should be a much better explanation of SAP when the students register because I didn’t even know dropping a class could affect FA, and as I said, I paid pretty good attention to all things money related. Maybe the students DID get a better explanation at orientation or when they met with advisers, but I, the parent never got that information.
My kids didn’t have the option of dropping classes. They both had scholarships that were good for 8 consecutive semesters, so they had to stick with the courses they picked. One went to a school where I paid by the credit, so there was no repeating courses either.
I’ve been an executor for relative’s estates a couple of times, in a few different states.
There are forms to fill out, and letters to get notarized and tax forms due and death certificates to mail out and copies of marriage licenses to try and retrieve and guess what- NOBODY from the probate courts or the state tax offices or the local jurisdiction property tax office or even the bank where the deceased had an account for 50 years tells you what is due when. Nobody. And if you ask the question the wrong way, you are likely to get an incorrect answer. In some states, you cannot sell real estate owned by the dead person before you’ve paid state estate taxes (and a lien will be put on the property, so even if you think you can sell it, a title search will bring the entire process to a screeching halt). In other states, there IS no state estate tax- so even an experienced layperson who has been an executor, can mess up.
Its all on you- Mr. or Mrs. Personal Representative, to try and figure out what form to send where. No, the police don’t come to your house and drag you out if you mess up. But you will likely pay penalties and extra fees, all of which come out of the proceeds of the estate- and don’t expect the heirs to thank you for not knowing when the deadlines were on a particular form, or what the right protocol was for notifying the life insurance company. You won’t get flowers for messing up a tax filing deadline, I promise you.
What’s the connection? OP-- if you are lucky enough to be a parent/adult and NOT have had one or more of these experiences where despite the fact that the information isn’t clear, or in one place, or the person at the front desk cannot explain it to you, you are STILL required to chase down the information yourself and will be held accountable for doing what’s required— you are one lucky ProfDad. Very lucky.
Have you ever been billed incorrectly for a surgical procedure? That might be a few months of letters back and forth-- doctors, insurance company, hospital billing-- maybe the bill ends up in collections, all for a procedure you didn’t get at a hospital you’ve never walked into.
Adult life is filled with these stupid things. And you are NEVER going to find someone at the proverbial “front desk” who can explain it to you. And it’s up to you to verify, verify, verify and then verify again. And then confirm- did you get the letter, even though you sent it registered mail; did the IRS agree with your math, does the court administrator agree that you met the statutory requirement by the appropriate date?
You are really lucky if this is your first go-round. And your kid is even luckier.
Blosson, thanks so much for your post. I just wanted to be sure to tell you, clearly, that the entirety of your message has been received. I understand both the content and the tone.
Consider me appropriately rebuked and humbled.
@profdad2021 - I wanted to echo some of the previous posts of those stating I am glad this situation, while clearly frustrating, will be resolved satisfactorily for your child.
This sounds like it has been a heck of a ride, and another reason that parents’ hair turns grey at this stage in our lives.
To me, it sounds like you are taking a great attitude and wanting to use this as a teachable moment, and to work with the university to improve a few things in the process so that others don’t have to have a similar experience. I am not sure about the email question, but I agree that the student portal should have some notification of an SAP warning status.
The two-page SAP document doesn’t clearly address transfer students. The school may or may not agree with you from a legal standpoint, but from a practical standpoint, I agree with you that they should care about making the process easier to understand - especially since their front-line people didn’t understand it either.
It sounds like transfer students, and any student taking less than a full course load (including after dropping any courses), are particularly at risk for the SAP concerns. When important issues like this are so complex, would it be helpful to the university community to have available a few examples of how students might get into SAP problems?
While they cannot address every potential theoretical situation, they could probably come up with another page or two of a few examples that address most of the common SAP pitfalls that students stumble across.
I am glad to hear you want to work with the school to find a better way to address this, and that it has made you a better prof for your own students.